Elevate Your Marriage: 7 Practices of Highly Intimate Couples

By Edward C Lee

A Better Relationship with your spouse, starts with a Better Relationship with Christ

Are you and your spouse "connected" the way you both want to be? Is your marriage all that God designed it to be? Is your marriage in need of being reconnected in areas that matter to you? If you are not satisfied with the answers to those questions, then this book is for you.

Through personal reflection and the wisdom of marriages captured in the Bible, Elevate Your Marriage, will help husbands and wives remove what keeps their marriage separated and enables them to join together intimately — spiritually and completely.

What if your financial stresses became financial intimacy?

What if how you communicated in your marriage became an entrance to deep emotional connection?

What if your marriage’s sexual relationship was a consistent place of knowing and experiencing each other without reservation?

What if you connected to the vision, mission and goals of God, for your marriage?

What if your marriage moved from the 98% that doesn’t pray, to intimate time together with God in ways that worked for your specific relationship.

Where your marriage is connected to God is where your marriage connects to each other the best. But, where a marriage lacks spiritual intimacy any idea of “other” intimacy from sexual to financial to emotional, will only be a downward spiral of learned behaviors and a program of activities or to-do items. In this book, Edward will share 7 practical, easy to implement practices that will elevate your relationship with Christ as they, Elevate Your Marriage.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Edward C Lee
• Release date: May 12, 2021

Edward C Lee

Edward Lee is a Christian marriage author find the Pastor of LongView Bible Church. His passion is to share the truth and principles of the Bible with husbands and wives of today.In addition to his writing and ministry work, Edward enjoys spending time with his wife Kimber and their son

Book preview

Dedication

To my best friend, my wife, Kimber.

Words cannot capture just how amazing you are.

Your love continually brings new life to my life.

Connor, I am so proud of you! You are growing up

to be a super awesome little boy, on your way to

great things in the Lord, and daddy loves you.

Edward (Sr) & Janet Lee—Dad and Mom,

an amazing model of love and parenting. Thanks

Dad for being a dad. Your sacrifices for me are well

appreciated. Thanks Mom for waking up early and

reading your Bible so I could see and for all of the

summer days that you made me come off the basketball

court to read a book. Thanks be to God for you both!

cont

Introduction

Strengthened with Power

Prologue

Adam and Eve: What Happened to Intimacy?

Practice One

Recognize the Greatest Need

Practice Two

Have Intimate Conversations

Practice Three

Connect the Dots

Practice Four

Choose to Give

Practice Five

Incite Worship

Practice Six

Great Sex: First Things FURST

Practice Seven

Be of the Way

Also by Edward C. Lee

About the Author

intro

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man.

Ephesians 3:14-16

The church is adorned perfectly with alternating pink and white flowers. An adorable young girl sprinkles rose petals all the way down the aisle. A handsome young boy, with darting eyes as big as saucers pensively walks down the aisle with satin pillow and replacement ring in his hands. The guests stand, a beautiful bride pauses at the threshold, and her groom strains to see the woman he cannot wait to spend the rest of his life with. The minister instructs the soon-to-be husband and wife to join hands as they gaze intently into each other’s eyes and exchange vows sworn to be for a lifetime. It is a most memorable day, punctuated by the enduring words, I do, I now pronounce you husband and wife, and You may kiss your bride. Do you remember that day? Of course you do. Regardless of the circumstances, whether it was at the Justice of the Peace, a small gathering of family and friends, or a grand affair, it is a day that stands out in our hearts, above the rest.

As a Christian minister, I have been in the middle of this Wedding Day scene and forged relationships with more than 70 couples. Through my books, blog, and marriage conferences, I frequently get the opportunity to speak with married couples that started out with deep dreams and high hopes, but now feel held hostage by emotional distance, loneliness, and hardened emotions that have crept into their relationship and pushed them apart. What started out as their points of strength and their hope for a bright future is now undone.

What I have noticed is that many couples go as far as they can go on their own strength. But, once they reach the end of their own strength, they have to try to force themselves to connect and be intimate around a lot of different things—but their effort can only hold the relationship together for just so long. Surely, some things will work for a little while. However, the ability to connect with each other in deep, meaningful, lasting, intimate ways is just not there. And the truth of every relationship is, couples really need those intimate points of connection that they want, but on their own strength, guided by their own wisdom, their desired depth of intimate connection never comes.

So through, Elevate Your Marriage, I want to present seven practices that couples can easily implement. Each practice is intended to move a couple closer to Christ and help lift the weight off a marriage that has become stuck in a rut and burdened down, and help them get intimate again. But not just intimate sexually or physically but intimate — spiritually and completely. Spiritual intimacy rests upon the husband and wife’s level of connection to God, together. Where our marriage is connected to God is where our marriage connects to each other the best. Where we lack spiritual intimacy, any idea of other intimacy, from sexual to financial to emotional, will only be a downward spiral of learned behaviors, a program of activities or to-do items that will consistently lack depth and sticking power. However, if a couple can elevate their view of Christ in their marriage to see His work and strength in their marriage, they will be able to see above the things that separate them.

Because, as we will see, there are wedges, built out of misidentified needs, emotional reservations, financial pressures, and the weight of life’s responsibilities, that are driven between two people in a marriage that keep them from being as connected as they could be. As these wedges do their work, the relationship struggles under the weight of two disconnected individuals bearing the brunt of that weight themselves, separate and apart. So through this book, we seek to expose what comes between a husband and wife, and then place those wedges outside of the relationship so that the spousal intimacy that God intended for marriage can­ be enjoyed at a high level. The idea of becoming Highly Intimate is not something that we can put a tape measure or yard marker to. However, what makes a highly intimate marriage is its ability to enjoy meaningful connections in every facet of their relationship. The path to this elevated, meaningful intimacy will only come through building spiritual intimacy with Jesus Christ.

Too often, spiritual intimacy is relegated to going to church and prayer, both of which will be covered in this book. But, is that it? Are they the only places that God resides in our marriage? Probably not. Christ did not die on the cross to become Lord in a few areas of our lives. Rather, He saved us and gave us the man or woman that we are now married to so that He may be the Lord over every facet of the relationship.

So then, what do you imagine happens when the very thing that traditionally keeps couples from connecting to each other becomes the rallying point for deeper intimacy? What if conflicts over money can move a divided couple from argument and estrangement to financial intimacy through a shared hope that their God provides every need? What does a marriage look like when couple’s prayer moves from barrier to emotional, intimate openness? Or, if marital sex becomes a place of intimate knowing and experiencing each other without reservation? What if in all of these areas (and a few others), husbands and wives lift up Christ, together, as a couple and begin to ask What can Christ still do for our marriage?

So, that being said, let’s elevate our view of Christ in all corners of our marriage and let Him bring us close—into the inner chambers of true intimacy. What waits on the other side of Elevate Your Marriage: Seven Practices of Highly Intimate Couples is a marriage that finds the treasure of intimacy in the Lord Jesus Christ through the common pressures of life—just as coal finds supreme value as a diamond through pressure. A marriage relationship among a husband, wife, and their God—one that recognizes the gift of their union—enjoys great conversations, confidently moves along God’s path, turns financial pressure into peace, forgives hurts, and includes great sex!

pro

And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

Genesis 2:25

Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.

Genesis 3:7

The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.

Genesis 3:21

Any mention of intimacy in a marriage or relationship will bring up a wide range of responses. For many, intimacy will bring to mind a couple’s sexual relationship. For others, intimacy will register as ideas of time spent opening up to each other. It could also lead to quiet time or leisure time—the point being that intimacy tends to mean something different to each person. Therefore, our expressions of and need for intimacy in marriage never seem to fit into any one box. So we can’t have this conversation about the practice of intimacy without first reigning in, narrowing down, and putting on the table what intimacy is and which forms of intimacy are on our minds.

With all that intimacy could be understood to be, our understanding of what intimacy in this book is one of being close or connected to each other, and we look for opportunities to make those intimate connections anywhere and everywhere in our marriage. As I write about what intimacy is, I can’t help but hear Lionel Richie and the Commodores singing their 1976 classic, Just to be Close to You, especially the part where he says, Take my hand; we’ll spend our lives together, Together, together, together, Just to be close to you, girl, Just for the moment, just for the hour…¹

Is that not just what every couple wants: to be close? Not just in a few limited ways now and then. Rather, in every conceivable, God-intended way, from what brought us together initially to what keeps us apart now, we want to be close. And we want those connections to be forged in every place that a husband and wife touch or interact with each other. From discussing the bills, to parenting, to planning the future, to having sex, such intimate connections are available all throughout our marriage. In everything that we do together, every dream, desire, and even challenge, we seek to be intimately connected both to each other and to God.

What Happened to Intimacy?

So, come here: I want to introduce you to a couple. Just as a friend would say and do at a social gathering, I want you to meet someone that I think will be a blessing to you and your marriage. You have heard of them; they are not complete strangers to you and I think they can explain why marriages struggle to be intimately connected.

In the entire history of the world, they are the only couple to experience the total, perfect, intimate relationship with each other and God that today’s marriages long for. Unfortunately, they could only hold onto that intimacy temporarily. So, they also know what it is like to lose that intimate connection with God and each other at an emotional level we can’t quite grasp. Because of where they once stood with God, and the unthinkable loss they suffered subsequently, they have remained the standard bearers for that which challenges our marriage relationships and interactions today. By now, you may have guessed that the couple I want to introduce to your marriage is Adam and Eve.

Everything we need to know about why a man and woman find it challenging to stay intimately connected in their marriage is captured in the story of Adam and Eve. In just the two short chapters of Genesis 2 and 3, Adam and Eve move from being a husband, a wife, and their God—intimately linked in three part harmony—to being two shame-filled individuals, separated and hiding from the Lord. Then, by the end of Genesis 3, God’s covering of grace reunites Adam and Eve through a durable three-way covenant with God. It is their three-part regression of intimacy, as I call it, from Genesis 2:25 to 3:21 that really explains our own feeble grasp on intimacy in our marriages today.

Naked and Unashamed

And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

Genesis 2:25

The first reality of marital intimacy is that in Genesis 2:25, before